Guilty as charged

Hadn't stopped by Game Show Paradise for a while, and I noticed a new thread called "Guilty Pleasures."

When it comes to TV - as opposed to other activities - my guiltiest pleasure is probably true crime. I spend more hours than I want to admit on Investigation Discovery and Oxygen. Snapped may be my lowest-rent fave. I remember a funny tweet of a girl saying: "You're one lie away from being my co-star on an episode of Snapped." That threat would keep me on the straight and narrow.

But back to the GSP thread. The original poster defines "guilty pleasure" as "game shows that you like, but most other fans of the genre do not." Well, this is a tricky definition. The Nielsen Company is probably the best source for what most fans of any genre really like.

By that definition Steve Harvey's Family Feud - though a very surprising choice for a couple of GSP posters - is not a guilty pleasure at all. His Feud is the top-rated syndie game show (yeah, I know about the add-'em-up Nielsen system for multiple runs) and a much-watched stalwart on ABC's Sunday night lineup. So most game show fans seem to like it a lot, thank you.

I think that what the o.p. really means is "game shows that you like, but a tiny handful of posters on Internet boards do not." Harvey Feud fits that definition just fine.

Another poster mentions Celebrity Name Game. Sure, the ratings weren't spectacular but the show managed to last three seasons. The show often gets drubbed on the game show Interwebs for violating the sacred Buzzr's lineup of dusty oldies. But that says nothing about the preferences of game show fans in the real world.